Depending on the weather, Lioness Club president Connie Burgan said members have prepared as many as 300 or so of the powdered sugar-topped treats each day of the festival, which resumes today at noon in Widmeyer Park.

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"We're going to learn how to do the funnel cakes for the Apple Butter Festival (in Berkeley Springs, W.Va.)," said Hancock Lions Club president James "Red" Smith, chairman of the Canal-Apple Days Festival. Their counterparts are unable to go this year, he said.

"It's not a moneymaker for us, but it gets a lot of people out," Smith said.

He hoped to recruit a few new members as well.

Sandi Myers, vice president of the Hancock Middle-Senior High School PTA, hoped to recruit a few members at the festival, too.

"We're doing our duty here," said Myers, who was joined by the group's treasurer, Melissa Lanehart, and their husbands.

"Hoping to catch a few locals," she said.

The group also was selling clothing emblazoned with the school's new panther logo, which Myers said had more teeth than the previous one she said resembled the logo of the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

Members of St. Peter's Catholic Church and other volunteers prepared 4,500 apple dumplings to sell for the weekend. They ran out of apples on Friday about noon or they would have baked more, Barbara Fry said.

"It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun," said Fry, who expected to sell out of the dessert.

"There is a secret recipe, yes," she said. "And it's going to stay that way."

Several yards away from the church's sprawling display of dumplings and about 60 other vendors at the festival, Beatrice Hill of Fulton County, Pa., enjoyed the music of the Tri-State Big Band.

"When I was going to school, we had an organ, and I always liked to mess around with that," said Hill, 88. "I just played for my own enjoyment."